A Multiregion Assessment of Observed Changes in the Areal Extent of Temperature and Precipitation Extremes

Abstract

his study examines trends in the area affected by temperature and precipitation extremes across five large-scale regions using the climate extremes index (CEI) framework. Analyzing changes in temperature and precipitation extremes in terms of areal fraction provides information from a different perspective and can be useful for climate monitoring. Trends in five temperature and precipitation components are analyzed, calculated using a new method based on standard extreme indices. These indices, derived from daily meteorological station data, are obtained from two global land-based gridded extreme indices datasets. The four continental-scale regions of Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia are analyzed over the period from 1951 to 2010, where sufficient data coverage is available. These components are also computed for the entire Northern Hemisphere, providing the first CEI results at the hemispheric scale. Results show statistically significant increases in the percentage area experiencing much-above-average warm days and nights and much-below-average cool days and nights for all regions, with the exception of North America for maximum temperature extremes. Increases in the area affected by precipitation extremes are also found for the Northern Hemisphere regions, particularly Europe and North America.